Indonesia's democratisation process is a case of the half-full glass. Pessimists argue that elections have descended into an ugly spectacle of vote-buying and manipulation that does little to distribute power in...

Hoko Horii is a PhD candidate at KITLV, conducting research on international human rights law and its implication on child marriage practice in Indonesia. She has been working with Mies Grijns, who is an ...

At the end of his brief European tour (Germany, Belgium, the UK), President Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) last Friday paid a one day visit to the Netherlands. He had breakfast with the prime minister, and visited a large scale ...

Gender relations in an Indonesian society; Bugis practices of sexuality and marriage, by Nurul Ilmi Idrus (Hasanuddin University), offers a comprehensive ethnography of Bugis marriage through an exploration of gender ...

KITLV researcher Jessica Vance Roitman is just back from two weeks working in the National Archives of Curacao. She reflects on the art of history, working with archival material, and the glimpses she’s caught of the social history of the Dutch Windward...

Communist Cuba is changing at an unprecedented pace. But nothing is what it seems in Cuba. Gert Oostindie reports after making a television documentary on the eve of president Obama’s visit. Classic Cadillacs and other old timers are ...